If you want to raise awareness of what Sys-Con are doing, please Digg this!, also Reddit.
The Sys-Con goes from bad to worse, launches Ulitzer, attacks community and content creators article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Updates: Since I published this post, Sys-Con published two articles aiming to defame me. Read more about the first one, titled "Turkish Fags Living in London" in which they call me a "homosexual son of a bitch", and the second one, titled "Turkish Web Designer Declares Death on Twitter" wherein they state that I am "said to be organizing an underground group to kill or bodily harm the company representatives" and wherein they compare me to the gunman who shot Pope John Paul II.
The Story
Yesterday, I got a Google Alert in my inbox informing me, based on a post that is being spammed into Google, that I was an author on something called Ulitzer. The only problem was, I had no clue what Ulitzer was and I sure as hell hadn't signed up as one of their authors. Regardless, they had created a subdomain using my name (aralbalkan.ulitzer.com, now down) and I was listed on the site as one of their authors. I called them up and asked for my name and content to be removed. To their credit they removed it almost immediately.
However, I'm not alone in this. Ulitzer proudly proclaims that they have more than 6,000 authors. Who are these authors?
Apparently David Heinemeier Hansson writes for them at http://davidheinemeierhansson.ulitzer.com/, as does Tara Hunt at http://tarahunt.ulitzer.com/ (her page looks a little quiet, I'm thinking maybe an outdated RSS URL? - Update: They removed Tara's page after I tweeted the URL to it but you can still find her name in this post.). From the Flash World, Peter Elst was one of their authors until he asked to have his name removed and Rich Tretola is still listed as an author (which must make it difficult for him to find the time to also write for InsideRIA).
Seriously, though, wtf?
Ulitzer and illusions of grandeur
So what is Ulitzer? According to the press release/blog post, "Ulitzer is designed to replace Wikipedia with Its [sic] three dimensional live content offerings and dynamic topic structure". Ah, so it's a new, open wiki project (in VRML perhaps?) to further human knowledge? How noble. Umm, no, not really. It's apparently a "media website" with "more than 1 million original stories, contributed by more than 6,000 authors."
Wow, that sounds like a real coup! How did they get "more than 6,000 authors" to contribute "more than 1 million original stories?" In short, they didn't. I'd like to know exactly how many of those authors, like me, have had their names used without their permission by Ulitzer, Inc. I'd also like to know how Ulitzer/Sys-Con defines "original".
According to Ulitzer, "Within the next five years, TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, Condé Nast Traveler, and Wikipedia will be replaced by Ulitzer."
The fact that they have the audacity to even compare themselves with Wikipedia and those other well-respected publications speaks volumes towards their general level of cluelessness. But there's more here than a mere disconnect with reality. Ulitzer, a Sys-Con company, appears to be a symptom of the Sys-Con business model which smells like it is built on a total lack of respect for authors and content creators and a disregard for any sort of journalistic integrity.
Rude awakenings
To illustrate, after I had twittered about Ulitzer yesterday, their CEO Fuat Kircaali called me up today on my mobile phone to ask me to explain why I was kicking up a fuss about Ulitzer on Twitter. Speaking to him in English (I know Turkish too but I feel more comfortable with English), I explained how several of us were pissed off because Ulitzer had used our names without permission. His response was "it's Sys-Con, Ulitzer is Sys-Con" (which, when you think of it, does make sense in an ironic way). He also told me "but we removed you" and followed it up with, "we don't need you". (Apparently, content creators are a dime a dozen according to Sys-Con and are simply a commodity to be mined.) As I went on, he interrupted me, in Turkish, to say something along the lines of "stop being a dick and talk to me in Turkish" (I can't really translate it, because if I do, it translates literally to "stop your whoring and talk to me in Turkish" which doesn't make much sense in English). Anyway, I don't take that sort of language from anyone so I promptly alerted him, in English, that our conversation was now over and hung up.
Doing some research, I realized that I shouldn't have expected anything more from Mr. Kircaali. I came across this page, strangely (and proudly?) posted by Sys-Con, in which he calls the woman he's having an email coversation with, Jame Ervin, a "bitch" and asks her "Who the fuck you think you are, lady?".
It also appears that Sys-Con is not beyond using its editorials to smear those that it doesn't like. After their email conversation, Sys-Con's Symbian Developer Journal News Desk posts a "news" article titled Jame Ervin of StoneFly a Crackpot? in which they refer to her as "this crazy woman" and insinuate that she should be fired as she "has no place in "real" corporate management".
Sys-Con: who shall we attack today?
And, to prove that they're still the same company, this morning Sys-Con posted an "article" attacking Ted Patrick. Ted is a respected member of and a long-time cornerstone of the Flash community. The "article" attacks Ted for his of-the-moment Twitter remarks on Ulitzer (Ted's Ulitzer site is still up, no doubt they didn't get round to taking it down yet: http://tedpatrick.ulitzer.com/).
In the "article", they insinuate that Ted was drunk at the time and talking for Adobe (he was talking for himself):
Because Twitter is out there under your finger tips, it makes it even more difficult to draw the line between you as the Friday night drunk private person Ted and Ted Patrick, who is in charge of Adobe's community relations.
When I first read the article this morning, it concluded with the following paragraph, emphasis mine:
I hope Ted sobered up this morning or I should say he wakes up sober when he gets out of bed, and thinks about his late night Tweeting activity of "this company needs to die" directed to one of Adobe's most important media partners among the Global tech media.
After I called them out on it on Twitter, they changed it to the following:
I hope Ted sobered up this morning or I should say he wakes up sober when he gets out of bed, and thinks about his late night Tweeting activity of "this company needs to die" directed to one of the most infulential [sic] tech media companies in North America.
Infulential [sic], indeed. I could use some far better words to describe Sys-Con right now too, Ted.
By the way, you can still see the original article if you search for it on Google (image, below, in case it changes).
What Mr. Salvatore Genovese, the author of that "article", needs to realize is that Ted is a beloved member of the Flash community as well as a valuable part of Adobe. If anything, I agree that Ted should change his Twitter handle to something else to make it clear that his words on Twitter are his own and not Adobe's. And his words yesterday were his own, not Adobe's, as anyone with half a brain and without a malicious agenda would plainly understand. If Mr. Genovese believes that his vicious vitriol will harm Ted's standing in any way at Adobe, he will be sorely disappointed because I can guarantee you that the Flash community will not put up with it.
Update: And it gets even better: Robert Hall just discovered that Mr. Salvatore Genovese is no other than Dolce & Gabbana supermodel David Gandy. You can't make this shit up!
(And I'm left wondering when Sys-Con will be publishing my own personal smear "article".)
Why are we putting up with Sys-Con?
I'm pretty sure Sys-Con isn't still around because of all the warm and fuzzy feelings it gets from the community (especially not the Flash community, that's for the sure). So how are they, and their attitude, still around?
Unfortunately, companies appear to support their business model when it fits their short-term purposes. I know Adobe did by advertising with them for the Coldfusion Developer's Journal and funding "them over and above advertising" as Ben Forta stated two years ago. In short, when it suited them, Adobe didn't see anything wrong with trading a few dollars for a seemingly independent magazine. When the dollars stopped flowing what did Sys-Con do? They abruptly changed the magazine to "Silverlight Developer's Journal". That's right, they didn't just stop publishing one magazine and start publishing another. Instead, they made a horse and pony show of relaunching a magazine about a proprietary server-side technology from one company as a magazine about a proprietary client-side technology from a different company.
What reasons did Sys-Con state for doing this?
"We have seen a rapid trend and move from ColdFusion to other emerging rich web technologies such as AJAX, Flex, and Silverlight," said Engin Sezici of SYS-CON Media.
Oh, right, people were moving from Coldfusion to AJAX, Flex, Silverlight. Reminds me of the time I moved from C++ to 3D Studio Max. I haven't looked back, really, it was better than when I moved from MySQL to Flash.
And where is journalistic integrity in all this? Probably crying its eyes out in a corner somewhere.
It's essential to understand that Sys-Con could not continue to exist without those companies that continue to sponsor it and its business model by funding their so-called "independent" magazines and conferences. It also couldn't continue to exist without people who, unaware of their practices, buy their magazines and attend their conferences. So educating the public is important here and it may just be time for those companies that sponsor Sys-Con to look beyond their short-term greed and ask themselves whether aligning their companies with an entity that doesn't appear to respect the rights of content creators is going to give the right message to their audience. Is purchasing an "independent" magazine or conference worth it? Are you listening Adobe? Microsoft?
I would love to hear of your experiences with Sys-Con and what your thoughts are on this Ulitzer mess. Please leave a comment below and let me know.
If you want to raise awareness of what Sys-Con are doing, please Digg this!, also Reddit.
Further reading
- Keith Peters: Sys-con / Ulitzer / Slime, Sys-con / Ulitzer totally lose it.
- Tim Anderson: Sys-con vs Aral Balkan in Web 2.0 war over intellectual property
And some previous articles about Sys-Con that hint that their behavior appears to be rather chronic:
- SYS-CON Media Redux: You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up
- LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff Resigns
- "What does ethics have anything to do with professional reporting and journalism?" (Fuat Kircaali, Sys-Con CEO) from this interview.
The Sys-Con goes from bad to worse, launches Ulitzer, attacks community and content creators article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
I followed the story via Twitter, really fucked up…
If they say Ted Patrick is drunk and speaking in the name of Adobe when he says SysCon needs to die, what do the same people say over their CEO who is calling people a “bitch” or oblige a man to speak Turkisch?
This one really “touched” me since I really hate unappropriated use of content. If we start contacting “their authors” maybe they run out of them quite quickly. That might delay the wikipedia replacement :)
But I have to admit we have to give them some credit at least they were good at choosing their name:
CON (english): to swindle, cheat or defraud.
CON (french): (from conard) really stupid person, asshole.
Aral and others,
For the record, I was completely sober yesterday when I was using Twitter to express my frustration at a certain media company. I have co-workers who can attest to my sobriety and that the article in question is wildly incorrect along those lines.
For the many that do not know me I am a passionate person and I have always spoken my mind, sometimes with a bit more color than need be. In regards to my comments yesterday saying that said company “needs to die” those were very strong words and if I had to do it over I would modify the word ‘die’ within the public record.
At issue here is whether a media company has the right to republish content published with a copyright (website and rss feed) without permission. My websites, powersdk.com, onflex.org, onflash.org has always been ad free and represent over 8 years of personal work that long precedes my employment with Adobe System and other companie. I believe it is wrong for any corporate entity to use content without permission under copyright and also wrong to republish works under a more restrictive and different license than the original.
The article written about me speaks volumes on the state of the media company in question.
Regards,
Ted Patrick
Hey Aral,
I also find it hilarious that the supposed “Salvatore Genovese” who wrote the article about Ted – doesn’t even bother to use his own photo – and instead the photo of “Salvatore” – is actually the ripped off image of some poor model, David Gandy – take a look at this page of the models photos: http://cache.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/no11/1/487162.shtml
Scroll way down to this image: http://img8.tianya.cn/photo/2007/11/12/5645587_9981569.jpg
And youll notice that appears to be the source of the photo of “Salvatore”
It appears that not only are they willing to steal articles, but also to steal identities, and the headshots of models who are paid for every image that is taken of them. I’m not 100% sure, but he could have sold away rights to this image as a stock photo, but it just makes you further wonder about their ethics.
For what its worth I did a search on the models name: David Gandy and here is a good profile on him:
http://nymag.com/fashion/models/dgandy/davidgandy/
I think they owe David Gandy some royalty fees for the use of his image. I wonder if he knows his likeness and identity has been stolen – what a bunch of douchebags over at Sys-Con.
Rob
PS. It was very easy to find the source of the photo in case anyone was wondering, I just downloaded it them submitted it to Tineye: http://tineye.com/ – and awesome search engine that allows you to submit an image, and then it finds similar or matching images around the web. Great service.
Yes, the word “die” should be changed to “burn”.
Ahhh Sys-con… They’ve been ripping articles from ColdFusion bloggers for years, and even after they finally killed CFDJ they continued to steal content, to the point where post titles like “Yay CFJD is dead!” were showing up on their home page. Ulitzer is an even bigger pile of trash, still with mountains of stolen content, but minus the ridiculous auto-playing video advertisements :P
Robert: The TINEYE.com site is really great.
Possibly the picture from the CEO is also from some stock photo.
I have been following your tweets about sys-con for some time and i totally agree with all of what you have said. Ted might have used colorful language but it was not colorful enough in my opinion. For a company whose CEO lashes out in a supposed professional email with liberal use of the F word and B word, die is at best a pin-prick. Also one of the great things about peple like you and Ted is that the articles and projects which you contribute help individuals pick up skills at almost no cost to them. pilfering content from you guys is inexcusable and hopefully that company gets its due. all the best.
I spoke at Ajax World (an event put on by SysCon) in NYC in 2007 and was disappointed with how lame the conference (which they charged $1500 per ticket for) was, but I was even more upset by the number of people (many of whom were my friends) that they listed as speaking at the event who had not agreed to do so. As with this latest venture (for which I was similarly informed of my “author” status), it was a use of their names without their permission. It’s also false advertising and could even potentially damage a speaker’s reputation if attendees were expecting her to speak and she was a no-show.
The whole thing stinks and I plan to formally request my removal from the site as well. Oh, and if you’re interested, I posted photos of the Ajax World program to my Flickr account as documentation of their wrongdoings.
I have no respect for those guys, they really do consider authors as a commodity to push advertising on their web site.
And you look at the articles, they push anything (like luxury yatch boat stuff, I kid you not http://christinapapadopoulos.ulitzer.com/).
Look also at the structure of the pages, any page you load from their site automatically got a popup ads (which is BAD practice in term of advertising), and an autoplay video (also bad practice), and in fact the first 1/3 of the page is just that: banner ads, no contents or whatsoever.
But anyway just by the way they made a “special” post about Ted twitter
says everything about this company, they are evil, period.
they’re already dead for me.
Here’s some more info, and my personal experience with this group of leeches.
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2013
I once attended a sys-con event and vowed to never return, it was blatantly obvious they were just a convenient front for corporations to show their wares with no objectivity at all. Recently they even had the AJAX conference with no representation from any of the open source Ajax frameworks. Unsurprisingly all their awards for best solutions in every category were products from their sponsors.
I think slimy was the word Mike Chambers used to describe them when he found they were stealing his content and I think its the best description.
When I did the DevNet article for Adobe on the State Design Pattern and using state machines in developing video players, the same article popped up on this place. Because the article has been part of a chapter I did in a book for O’Reilly, both O’Reilly and Adobe contacted them and had words. They responded, apologized and I forgot about the whole thing. So apparently, someone there just takes what they want, and if there’s a flap–apologies all around. Strange way to do business.
Bill
I know *so* many people who have had articles scraped and pushed out by these dirtbags over the years. I think maybe “class action suit” would be the best response to their frequent apologies at this point. When you build a “business” on theft and deception you should be brought down. (oh. I’m certifiably sober at the moment)
Back in September of 2006, I guess you could say I was “systematically conned” (SYS-CON) writing an article for their WDDJ printed magazine. After negotiating a price with them, I wrote the article and it appeared in their print magazine and is still online today at http://jamesoreilly.ulitzer.com. I never received my payment for the article and after a few months of trying to collect I just gave up. I will be following up with them to remove my profile and article from Ulitzer.
Well, Sys-Con claims that all ‘authors’ are entitled to get all of the ad revenue from their pages; however, there’s no way to actually get into one’s ‘account’ (since they set it up without our knowledge/permission), and therefore there’s no way to get paid. I’m not asking them to take my content down yet, because then they’ll say that means that they can just keep all of the revenue they’ve made illicitly off of me to date, and they need to pay for this theft from their pockets. I’ve been planning to have a lawyer look into this – and as soon as some funds start coming in, I fully intent to see what the legal options are and will be happy to get a class action rolling.
The irony is that the actual technology they’ve built could be used for good. If they just took the engine of what they have there and presented it with any amount of openness or regard for ethical behaviour, then they might end up with the nugget of a product that technical authors would *opt* to engage with – the sort of thing that, with nurture, might just grow into a real asset to both the community and the owning company.
Just another example of good tools being put to bad ends by silly buggers who don’t really understand or care about the industries they’re working in.
Anyway – Sorry to hear you got burned by their behaviour, and thanks for warning the rest of us.
More interestingly, they do claim that “ulitzer content” is offered under creative commons. So perhaps there is a sort of legal loophole here for content that is under CC? (I’m not familiar with these sorts of things)
I can’t say the same for identity fraud though.
On another side note… boo I’m not popular enough to have my articles ripped off by them. That sucks. :)
Thanks much for this post. Like others, I have a distaste for behavior like this and am glad you have spoken about it. I take everything with a grain of salt, but I think this info is important and hope that the community will continue to speak up when stuff like this occurs.
Following up on my last comment (made from my phone), the folks I know for a fact Sys-Con propped up as speakers at the event were Derek Featherstone, Nate Koechley, Jeremy Keith, and Molly Holzschlag. Also, I just remembered that the contract for the event attempted to acquire all rights to my presentation at AjaxWorld so it could be packaged and resold by them. I, of course, made them remove that clause from the contract as I was not willing to give them anything, especially as they a) weren’t paying me to speak, b) didn’t pay for my travel expenses, and c) had to be pressured to even pay for my hotel stay for the duration of the conference. It didn’t stop them from using my name (and Molly’s) on the back cover of the DVD of the event (that they sold), but I was relieved to find that they did not include any of my material on the disc.
Wow, content and identity theft seems to be all the rage this weekend. See:
http://www.kevinwilliampang.com/post/Content-Stealing-Jerks.aspx
[...] see Aral has now posted on his blog his viewpoint and some of Sys-con/Ulitzer’s response. All I can say is not only are their [...]
[...] morning I did a Google search for sys-con aral to see if anyone else had picked up on my blog post on Sys-Con from yesterday. I was surprised to find an article pop up titled “Turkish Web Designers Who Live in London: Aral [...]
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO SALVATORE
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quasimondo/3395532372/
http://kevinaschmidt.ulitzer.com/
Apparently I’m a Dolce and Gabbana model as well.
Kevin
@kevin: LOL. looking good!
Kym Jones http://kymjones.sys-con.com/ has also a second carreer as Wikipedia model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair
OK, I give up. How did you guys get your names removed from Ulitzer? I’ve been scouring the site and the contact links don’t work. Seems like the only thing working is the registration form, which I didn’t want to fill out and agree to any terms.
James: I called their phone number (+1 201 802-3028) and spoke to them to have my content and name removed.
Sys-Con It’s one of the biggest spam generators I’ve known I started receiving
“discounts and offers” from them in my Gmail account and suddenly their spam was also on my yahoo account and on some other mail accounts, don’t now how and why they do this but I have zero trust in any sys-con content.
I found an interesting article by Mr Fuat Kircaali.
Success, Arrogance, Rise and Fall – History Repeats Itself
http://oracle.sys-con.com/node/43873
If only he had listened to his own advice his company might not be in the situation they find themselves right now. Here are some quotes.
“Ten years ago when I founded SYS-CON Media, one of the rules I had learned was that arrogance could kill any company in any stage of its life.”
“Over the past 10 years as we’ve served our i-technology markets, we have seen it all. We’ve worked with arrogant and stupid people in organizations of all sizes.”
“Arrogance is the beginning of the end.”
“Don’t treat your partners and customers who brought you where you are today with disrespect.”
I think the last one is perfect.
I’ve just read your post about what sys-con is doing without permission, and I can’t believe my eyes. If I see myself look like the Dolce and Gabbana guy at ulitzer I will not be surprised :)
“it was better than when I moved from MySQL to Flash” .. ahahahahahahhaha
Looks like you’re wanted by Interpol and Scotland Yard: http://twitter.ulitzer.com/node/896664
[...] http://aralbalkan.com/2022 [...]
Sys-con has proven themselves to be clueless when it comes to any community interaction since day one. They tried an editorial board made up of ColdFusion experts and then never used them (other than their names). They got a free editor in the form of Simon Horwith and used him for his name only. Even when critics of their actions left or were removed from the editorial board (without any announcement), they were still used in the masthead of CFDJ.
Even after they burnt their bridges with Adobe by blaming them for the death of CFDJ, they took criticism from Sean Corfield and myself and turned the blame on us. I’m proud to take the blame for the demise, even if its not the case. I’d love to think that FAQU killed them. :)
Utilizer is not a media company, it’s a bot collecting blog posts for them to ‘edit’ and post. I say edit in the loosest form of the word as all they do is add in a word or two into the title and post it. I’ve worked with Sys-con and I’ve worked with real editors on my own stuff and there is NO comparison between the real thing and a systematic con.
I can go on and on and on but they’re not worth my time.
BTW, there is a controversy about the repost of rss feeds and full articles from a blog on other peoples sites. A rss feed can be assumed to be a ‘open license’ for reprint in the form of aggregation and if your rss feed has the full article then the reprint rights are implied. On the other hand, if you have a clear copyright and/or reprint policy for your site that is included in your rss feed then they have no right to copy your content. I use the following:
“The RSS feed and emails sent from the site may only be aggregated or archived by third parties with full attribution to the location and unaltered title of the original content. In addition, if the aggregation or archiving will be on a regular basis then permission from the site administrator must be obtained. If such permission is not obtained then the aggregation and/or archiving of House of Fusion site content is in violation of copyright.”
It’s not perfect but it gives me a solid leg to stand on if someone starts using my content as their own. Oh, and to be more legal than legal the House of Fusion copyright also says that any content posted to the forum is owned by the poster with a ‘license’ to us to use:
“By posting to the forums, a subscriber assigns the rights to display, distribute and otherwise make use of the posted information to House of Fusion.”
We don’t own a posters content, we just have rights to use it. :)
You know, one of the American authors should go after them with the DCMA in hand. This is the law that the RIAA and MPAA use to go after pirates, and is equally setup to do major harm to this company. At least they removed my “author” page right after I told them to…
[...] latest attack on me, following the defamatory article they published, then removed, earlier after I called them out on Ulitzer. They’ve now published an article titled “Turkish Web Designer Declares Death on Twitter” [...]
Hi Aral,
Make sure to keep a backup of that post which was taken down off their site:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:JRLYB0YDZ2IJ:wireless.sys-con.com/node/823476+http://wireless.sys-con.com/node/823476&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a
“Unedited Transcript of Private Email Exchange”
I’ve been following their latest antics on Twitter and the Flash blogosphere for the past few days as well. Unfortunately, I am little surprised by Sys-Con’s actions in this latest Ulitzer debacle. They’ve had a long history of sloppy fact-checking, breathless yellow journalism, editorial ad-hominem mudslinging, and most recently, descending new lows in unethical and questionably illegal practices.
Sadly, this latest round is nothing new. In the past, they’ve managed to earn the ire of both the Linux and ColdFusion communities. Now it just happens to be our turn. Hopefully the communities that they’ve burned will speak up, send letters to advertisers, and finally convince them to turn things around.
I have no idea who you are but stumbled on this from Hacker News. Wow, I used to watch some videos on Sys-con on web development; I always thought they were corporate schills. However, this whole thing of using random photos on the internet as the photos of their authors. That is about the worst I have seen on any web site that claims to be a reputable player in the world of enterprise software development. Amazing.
Someone like Joel Spolsky of Jeff Atwood should comment on this. That would really alert the sponsors of this crap company
i meant “Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood”
Just thought I’d mention that SYS-CON / Ulitzer’s new self-publication model is wide open to XSS attacks from article authors. I made use of this (and they haven’t noticed yet) to point some illegally republished content back to my own site…try http://java.sys-con.com/?q=node/167938 .
SYS-CON’s always had a craptastic ethics record. We’ve dealt with them for years in the CF community (before it died ;) ). I once had to negotiate a cash settlement with them after a blog entry of mine somehow wound up being printed and distributed in one of their publications.
[...] like many web workers would have done, wrote a post explaining and condemning the entire publication. Soon after, he discovered a new post via Google [...]
Wow this is unbelievable. When I first saw the tweets of people complaining about this, I thought “ok, Sys-Con screws yet another author, big surprise” but this goes way beyond just stealing content. When is someone going to bring a lawsuit against this terrible company? What they are doing is inexcusable, childish, unprofessional, illegal and wrong.
Looks like I’ll be making a companion blog entry to this over the next few days. Many of the names mentioned here are people I consider mentors and friends – and folks I have learned a LOT from over the last 15 years. To see them treated in such manners and defamed/libeled at such levels is COMPLETELY BS.
Joe, Aral, and others – you have my hearfelt sympathy when dealing with such “people”.
hehehe, how did you learn turkish btw? and honestly using david gandys photo as his own? mwhahaha!!!
Oh joy! Apparently, I too am still one of their authors, and ranked #12 out of 6148. Lucky me. And nice to be in the company of over 6000 others, most or all of whom I assume want nothing to do with SYS-CON.
Oh well, I said my bit way back when:
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/9/10/So-Long-CFDJ-Goodbye-And-Good-Riddance
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/9/11/Who-Killed-CFDJ
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/10/12/A-Moment-Of-Silence-For-
— Ben
[...] An excellent post on Ulitzer and the business ‘practices’ of Sys-Con by Aral Balkan. Read the links there about [...]
I thought I left those douche bags back in Turkey. But now I see that they’ve spread all over the world. Unbeliavable!
here is Jame Ervin’s experience,
“How to lose business and friends, brought to you by Sys-Con Media”
http://jameane.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/how-to-lose-business-and-friends-brought-to-you-by-sys-con-media/
good luck
[...] Balkan exposed the scam when he saw his name appear on the site via a Google News alert. After going public about the [...]
[...] http://aralbalkan.com/2022 [...]
[...] has meticulously documented everything we need to know (about this side of the story) and you MUST read it, digg it and reddit. Not that it was necessary, but to the possible extent I’ve double-checked [...]
Disgusting.
I’m spreading the word via Facebook/Twitter.
Here is the cached article before he changed it (thanks to Google):
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:XRkGguu24z0J:openwebdeveloper.sys-con.com/node/896478+sys-con+ted+patrick+media+partners&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
Wow, the similarities between ZDNet and Ulitzer are astonishing..
http://www.inquisitr.com/20925/sys-con-caught-operating-a-massive-splog/
Aral, noticed Ben Forta, Christophe Coenraets, Sean Corfield and Mike Chambers in there too. I wonder if they know too?
[...] The solution I came to was to make my own SharedObjects, or rather custom files using the AMF data format. It was actually much easier than I had initially feared. I got my start by reading this article by Ted Patrick. (Unfortunately, the article is hosted on a Sys-Con property, and I’m not a fan of their tatics.) [...]
I just heard about this “new” site. They recycled some of my old reviews of programs from 7-8 years ago that have absolutely no relevance to today. What’s the point? I attended their AJAX conference a few years ago that was a total joke — nothing but a sales pitch. I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t gotten a free ticket, but I’ll never get that time back.
Article mentioning this: http://ulitzer.ulitzer.com/node/899594
Man, this just keeps getting better and better!
[...] few people have been wondering whether Sys-Con’s behavior recently with regard to Ulitzer (see Sys-Con goes from bad to worse, launches Ulitzer, attacks community and content creators, And Sys-Con defames me & And Sys-Con libels me *again*) constitutes a lapse in judgement or [...]
[...] of last week was the manifesto-gate. The mini-scandal of this week is shaping out to be the Ulitzer-gate (if you want to make sure not to miss next week’s IT scandal, subscribe to the Register feed, [...]
Aral,
Take out the Ted’s link on Syscon site. It’s crashing the browser all the time.
Hi Carlos,
I’m just getting a simple 404 page. Which browser/OS is it crashing on?
Yeah I went to the Sys-Con Cloud Computing and Virtualization Conference in NYC over the last week. While it was mostly worthwhile, it was too pricey compared to other technical conferences. They want you to buy a gold pass of $1500 (or $1995 at the door) to be a delegate. Definetly too expensive for most people. Even if you pay $100 for the lower Expo Plus level, you don’t get a lot of the gold pass perks like lunch, additional technical sessions, etc… The whole gold pass system makes the events inaccessible for those not sponsored by a large company. It gives the event this sense of elitism which is really not what IT is about given the spirit of enterpreneuralism that exists in making new technologies. I can think of many other ways for a company to spend that kind of money especially in this economy.
Ridiculous. Pathetic insults, stealing content, and using random photos? If this is what “the most powerful media company” in the world does, how do the other companies have a chance? Thanks for sharing your story Aral!
[...] started here: http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=1263 And continue on Aral website http://aralbalkan.com/2022 http://aralbalkan.com/2056 [...]
[...] We’re whoring, drinking, and shooting the pope! This article was found on Joe Rinehart on ColdFusion, Flex, and Java. Click here to visit the full article on the original website.Sys-con’s at it again. Here’s the short version: Sys-con reprints Aral Balkan’s content online. Aral Tweets a WTF. Ted Patrick replies with a “this company needs to die.” Sys-Con states that Aral’s whoring, Ted’s drinking, and a Turkish heritage implies that you’re a Papal assassin. This morning, they approved for publication a quick article I wrote describing the affair. It’s at least nice to see that they’ll let us use their own platform to disagree with them. My article’s had a few bits edited, so I can’t guarantee it’s going to be 100% what I said. While the article has been published, Ulitzer / Sys-Con has pulled my author page and removed other articles I’ve written. I’m not making any of this up: Aral documents it quite well. [...]
What a facinating blog. I’ve bookmarked it and added your feed to my RSS Reader